the bottlenecked blog

Emptying the Bottle: Late May '12 Links

2012-05-23T08:58:00.000-04:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

Consistency: the golden calf of parenting.
An excellent business, prison exit consulting (earlier).
Don't just use travel tips, use travel tip parasites.
Homeless people as wireless networks (earlier) [video].
My generation doesn't care about cars, which I like (earlier).
Every Potential 2040 President Unelectable Due To Facebook (earlier).
Canada gets rid of the penny, but the US shouldn't get rid of the dollar.
Government's own data shows HEAD START doesn't work [video].
Why price gouging should be legal (earlier) [video].
Best argument against legalizing drugs I've read yet, but I still don't buy it (earlier).
The Mormon Church retroactively baptizes (like Anne Frank and Hitler).
Stossel can convince you your getting a good deal on gas (earlier) [video].
Best description I've heard of the future of the world economy [audio].
Economic trust is in your blood [video].
The price of college has NOT gone up significantly [audio].
Retirement kills you (earlier) [audio].

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Cheating Game Theory on a Game Show

2012-05-21T09:21:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite past blog posts was the one picked up by the New York Times' Freakonomics blog. It was about the economics of the game show finale of the Bachelor Pad. I then revisited the idea mentioning another reality TV show Golden Balls. It's a British show where at the end the two contestants have to decided whether to split or steal the money. Recently, a contestant played it a little differently:

Alchemy's TEDx Improv Performance

2012-04-25T18:38:00.000-04:00

A month ago I mentioned an upcoming performance at Greenville TEDx. The show came and went and it was incredible. I can honestly say it is one of my top performance achievements. You may have to watch the other talks of the day in order to fully appreciate it. Enjoy the show!

New Baby New Blog

2012-04-19T23:37:00.001-04:00

That's right, my wife and I are having a baby! And here's the most recent post from my new baby blog, written from the perspective of the main character:

It's official, I'm a boy or girl! You'll have to solve this word problem to find out which:

I'm the most popular baby in the world. I charge the minimum wage in 1994 (in 1996 dollars) per hour to be baby-sat before midnight. But I get a dollar more per hour if you keep me up later. Last Friday, I earned $28.50 for being baby-sat by the neighbors until 1:30am. What time did I start?

If it's before 8pm I'm a girl. After 8pm I'm a boy. Good luck!

And here's the first heartbeat and ultrasound!

Emptying the Bottle: Early April '12 Links

2012-04-03T23:49:00.000-04:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

Don't text and live via The Onion [video].
Great Wall, cracking knuckles, and other common misconceptions [video].
Too big to fail badly, a living will for big banks.
Justin, my blogfather, has quit blogging.
From Penelope Trunk: Divorce is immature and selfish. Don't do it.
You are impossibly small (and impossibly large) [graphic].
Nerd March Madness: Democrats vs. Dictators.
The story of Morse code and why technology matters [audio].
It's not about Tiger moms, it's about moms.
You're in relationship trouble when you see no trouble [chart].
Alchemy Comedy interview on Your Carolina [video].
The problem with feminism from the daughter of a leader.

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Time to End Daylight Savings Time

2012-03-13T23:12:00.002-04:00

"Alchemy of Laughter"

2012-03-04T23:45:00.001-05:00

As if improv company Alchemy Comedy performing at TEDx Greenville wasn't two worlds colliding enough, here's a TED talk about comedy that actually uses the phrase the "alchemy of laughter". Like me, what the comedian Chris Bliss wanted most in life was to influence people. But people don't like to be changed. Comedy, he found, was a way to speak truth into people's mouths while their open from laughter:

Hat tip to fellow comedian Ben Burris.

Big Government to Prevent Bigger Government

2012-02-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

I recently posted Tyler Cowen's thoughts on income inequality, but the article linked was originally sent to me by Justin because of Cowen's positive thoughts on the bailouts (which I don't support):

How about a world with no bailouts? Why don’t we simply eliminate the safety net for clueless or unlucky risk-takers so that losses equal gains overall? That’s a good idea in principle, but it is hard to put into practice. Once a financial crisis arrives, politicians will seek to limit the damage, and that means they will bail out major financial institutions. Had we not passed TARP and related policies, the United States probably would have faced unemployment rates of 25 percent of higher, as in the Great Depression. The political consequences would not have been pretty. Bank bailouts may sound quite interventionist, and indeed they are, but in relative terms they probably were the most libertarian policy we had on tap. It meant big one-time expenses, but, for the most part, it kept government out of the real economy (the General Motors bailout aside).

I actually agree. In fact, in my history classes I describe the intervention of FDR's New Deal as effective. Not because it fixed the Great Depression, but because it was the moderate choice in a time of extreme global chaos. Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were taking over nations as the extreme right. Stalin and the communists were taking over as the extreme left. Even in America leftist critics like Governor Huey Long were writing books like Share Our Wealth. In fact, 1930's socialist Norman Thomas wrote that the "Mr. Roosevelt did not carry out the Socialist platform, unless he carried it out on a stretcher". Perhaps FDR's huge expansion of the government was the least government could do without forcing a revolution.

Income Doesn't Mean Inequality of Life

2012-02-28T06:57:00.000-05:00

From Tyler Cowen:, who wrote a whole book about how income inequality is real, but wrote an article recently about how the implications are not that bad:

First, the inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past twenty years as well. Bill Gates is much, much richer than I am, yet it is not obvious that he is much happier if, indeed, he is happier at all. I have access to penicillin, air travel, good cheap food, the Internet and virtually all of the technical innovations that Gates does.

[...]

Compare these circumstances to those of 1911, a century ago. Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labor, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort.

Worthwhile Sentences on Writing

2012-02-26T19:22:00.001-05:00

From Hugh Hollowell: "The thing about founding a nonprofit is that, eventually, all your dreams turn into paperwork."

From Justin Landwehr: "Words are the waste products of our experiences."

From David Foster Wallace: "Writers have a queer blend of shyness and exhibitionism."

From Brene Brown: "Maybe stories are just data with a soul."

From Mark Twain: “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

Improv Comedy Meets TED Talks

2012-02-23T18:36:00.001-05:00

My intention wasn't for my 1000th post to be my last, but I'm it sure looked that way. I've been extra busy with some great opportunities that have come my way and I just couldn't make my way to the top of the pyramid to blog. One of the most exciting things is that Alchemy Comedy, which has just ended out first and sold out our second Improv 101 class, has been asked to close out Greenville TEDx. You know I love TED and improv, so I'm excited to put them together. On March 30th, we will be watching all the TED Talks and using them to inspire a series of improvised comedy scenes to conclude the day. So if you're in the area get your tickets soon, apparently they sold out the last few years. And if you're out of town, you're in luck, I hear they are going to stream it!

Emptying the Bottle: Late January '12 Links

2012-01-30T21:13:00.002-05:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

How to properly reheat a pizza [video].
The important non-policy requirements for the president.
Thoughts from someone with a lot of thoughts.
Pascal's Wager: Why you should believe in God.
I just created @TraciBrookie to update it with cute things she says.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing [audio].
Waterworld-urine-drinking is here!
Maybe we don't become more conservative as we age (earlier).
Rube Goldberg machine with a purpose, kind of [video].
Maybe the best story I've heard about 9/11 (via Justin).

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Last Post!

2012-01-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

1000 posts and over 4 years ago, on January 16th, 2008, I did my first post. Today I write my last post. Not the last post I'll ever write, but the post I'd like to have put up last. Let me clarify. I got the idea from a blogger, who asked his family and friends to publish one last pre-wrtitten post for him when he died. I figured, why wait until you are actually on your death bed? So here are my final thoughts, that I expect to update annually and would like to be reposted after I die.

1) I am doing this to ensure I get to a say in what is written about me when I die. Knowing me in person is the best way to get a grasp for who I am. Sharing stories about me is the second best. Reading this blog is probably the third best. Although my recently deceased grandfather's obituary was fine, it wasn't what I would like mine to say.

2) This is also a chance for me to finally get a legal will and updated life insurance. Your death will already be hard for your loved ones. Any future planning that can make their grieving better should be done.

3) I'd like to die how doctors die. Please spare me any "futile care". Life isn't about surviving.

4) This post isn't about being morbid. It's about facing reality. I will die. And like most of life, it will probably be unexpected. I doubt we think about too much about death and expect the opposite to most likely be true.

5) My final thoughts resemble those of James Madison's deathbed letter entitled "Advice to My Country". His greatest desire was the the United States to perpetuate. My loyalty is a little more localized. My greatest hope is that my family would perpetuate. That my loved ones be taken care of in my absence.

Although I don't want to be buried or have a grave stone, if I did, I'd like this on it: "He Really Lived. He Really Died. He Really Lived Again."

The Past, Present, and Future of Greenville Manufacturing

2012-01-16T14:39:00.001-05:00

I love it when NPR does a story on my hometown. Just this week Planet Money did a two part series on the history of American manufacturing through the lens of Greenville, SC. Here's my version of the story:

The Past

With several forces coming together at the right time, the early days of the Industrial Revolution brought about radical economic change. Work moved from the home to factories in cities, greatly improving human life, wealth, and morality. Which meant the late 1800's and early 1900's saw huge economic growth. These increases in production, and in turn increasing wages, didn't require very much expertise (assembly lines run themselves) and could often be created by a lone genius inventor.

The Present

Then we had The Great Stagnation. The Industrial Revolution picked up all the low-hanging fruit of innovation. Printing press, cheap western land, fossil fuel powered machines, penicillin, clean water, cars, planes, basic worker education, etc. all made life better quickly and relatively easily. Computers, cancer research, alternative forms of energy, college education for all, etc are all slow going and complicated to benefit from. Also, much of the innovation of machinery and globalization of trade has replaced the low skill industrial workers of the past and it's still happening (just check this old and new video of automobile manufacturing).

The Future

If you read the full Planet Money story in the Atlantic the future looks grim. Workers are suffering in the name of profit. The poor try, but can never succeed. The reality is a little more optimistic. Every time a human is replaced by a machine (or even a cheaper human) customers benefit. And since all workers are also customers, even the replaced workers' lives can improve. The unemployed of today probably have better living standards than the employed of the 1910's because of increases in productivity. That's why I support some kinds of social safety nets (especially the kind that retrains replaced workers). I also suggest that when choosing a career be sure you can't be replaced by a machine in your lifetime (hint: don't go into the toy assembling business).

The Distant Future

Though if I did have a worry about how technology impacts society, it would be about fertility. As technology improves, jobs become more complicated. That's why the return on education is actually greater than it used to be, even non-economically speaking (especially if you weren't "supposed to go"). This increase in complexity requires an increase in education. Which is usually fine because increases in education result in increases in pay that exceed the cost of that education. But what I'm specially worried that if jobs become so complicated that they require decades of education, they could delay plans for family past the point of our most fertile years. What if we have to learn so much we can't have babies anymore, increasing the future underpopulation bust? My guess is creating a family while still in school will become a more common trend.

Reader Request: Do Christians Really Believe?

2012-01-15T23:25:00.001-05:00

I always take reader requests. Here's one from blogger and interesting thinker, Justin Wehr:

Here's one I'd like to see you respond to:

They believe that they believe, but their beliefs are of the easily disposable kind. Suppose you could take a devoutly religious person, ask him, “Are the tenets of your religion true?” and somehow convince him that the life of his child depends on getting the answer right. I’m guessing that nine times out of ten, you’d find yourself confronting a born-again infidel. The only reason that rarely happens is that there’s rarely an occasion when getting the right answer actually matters.
Quote from Steven Landsburg that I came across in this post: http://bit.ly/xpn9Dh

Here's what I want to know

Which (if any) tenets of your religion would you hold onto and which (if any) would you discard if your kid's life were on the line?

In your estimate, what percentage of pious people would become, in the above situation, "born again infidels"?

One of the things I noticed on my summer European tour is how global cultural religion is. The American South is famous for religious culture, but it exists everywhere and in every religion. First I'll respond to a specific points made in the post linked above:

If there really is a heavenly and eternal paradise awaiting us after death, one would think more people would be in a rush to get there, right?

I can only speak for Christianity, but the Church mostly agrees that although we long for heaven, we have a mission here on earth. So suicide or a reckless life does not fit with Biblical teachings. Now if the writer had complained that Christians don't live out the second half (the mission part), then that is a legitimate complaint. One that atheist Penn Jillette makes really candidly in this video.

To put it simply, most [religious people] don’t live their lives as if they absolutely believed in the words their religious texts profess. For example, if I truly believed in the Christian God, with absolute certainty, I would live my life in a way consistent with that.

I'm curious what he means by this. If he means living a "good life", that is not the description the Bible seems to describe (Old and New Testament). The Christian life is one of repentance, sin, growth, hardship, joy, etc. And for that, I have witnessed many living that life. Which I don't think this writer gets:

Most religions assert that God is watching our actions even when others aren’t watching. If this were true, my inner economist would tell me that people would avoid displeasing God at all costs.

Now to respond to Justin's blockquote. I think the opposite is true. When people's lives are on the line, we see more religious conversion than abandonment. It doesn't seem to me that this person knows many Christians. I think most I know (let's say 90%), my self included, would not waiver. The biggest belief I am personally sure of is the grace of Jesus. I know of no other way to explain my own failures and my own triumphs. The rest of Biblical doctrine is more malleable. For example I now go to a church that practice believers baptism, which I'm not convinced of. I go to a church that doesn't believe in predestination, which I am convinced of. But I still find myself connected our surety in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

Proof of Gmail's Superiority

2012-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

Working for the school system means sometimes I have to deal with Microsoft Outlook. Here's proof that Gmail is better for you:

We carried out a field study of 345 long-term users who conducted over 85,000 refinding actions. Our data support opportunistic access. People who create complex folders indeed rely on these for retrieval, but these preparatory behaviors are inefficient and do not improve retrieval success. In contrast, both search and threading promote more effective finding.

Yet the school system still blocks all Gmail access.

No One's In Control

2012-01-14T18:15:00.001-05:00

Everybody's favorite conservative, David Brooks, on Ron Paul (and really the Tea Party):

I sympathize with their sense that they have lost control of their country. That doesn’t mean that the people who have control are operating in some dark room in the Federal Reserve Building. The fact is nobody really has control. Not even Obama or Bernanke. That’s what’s nice about this place.

Via Justin Scott's Big Find.

Yawning as an Empathy-O-Meter

2012-01-13T23:30:00.000-05:00

just try not to

A friend recently shared a CBS News segment on the sociometer, which measures a person's charisma. But what if you want to measure or improve empathy? Here's an interesting way to tell:

A popular theory for how yawns spread is that they automatically engage the empathy systems in our brains. Consistent with this, past research found that children with autism, some of whom have difficulty empathising, are immune to the contagious effects of yawns.

Now Ivan Norscia and Elisabetta Palagi have developed this line of enquiry, showing that we're more likely to catch a yawn from relatives than acquaintances, and more likely to catch them from acquaintances than strangers - presumably because we have more empathy for people with whom we're emotionally intimate.

Similar to touching, it seems our brain has many ways to force us to empathize.

Money Can't Buy You Votes

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

With the Republican primaries dominating the news these days, it's worth taking a look at. But unlike most reporting which feels more like sports commentary based on either hunches or the obvious, the boys at Freakonomics ask an important and interesting question: Does Money Really Buy Elections?:

When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

So even though I'm a big supporter of publishing who gets what money from where, what I thought in 2008 and 2010 still stands. Campaign donations are like voting, they are a way to show your support, but they don't matter much.

Worthwhile Sentences on Relationships

2012-01-12T11:01:00.000-05:00

From Justin Landwehr: "Maybe I don’t want to care about impressing you, but I sure as hell want you to care about impressing me"

From economist Al Roth: "Let’s just say that marriage is a dynamic game that you play over a lifetime."

From the Simple Dollar: "The trick to a good presentation is to realize that the audience mostly just wants for the presentation to be over so they can do other things"

From ~~Leela Turanga~~ Turanga Leela: "Society is never gonna make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other."

From ~~Anna~~ Jonathan Franzen: “Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.”

Difference Between Conservative and Liberal

2012-01-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

A while back I did a two part series on Why I'll Never Vote for a Democrat (because big government has done more horrible things than big business) and Why I'll Never Vote for a Republican (because most change in American history has been good). Though I'll probably eventually vote for both parties (if I vote at all), I have very little patience for the talking points of each (and so do about 30% of Americans). But I talk a lot about political parties and especially political ideology, so I think it's important to put down specifically what I mean when I use the words conservative and liberal (full disclosure I claim to be a libertarian, but most see me as a conservative) .

As I've mentioned before, the two words are used so much and so differently that they have almost lost meaning. At the heart of each word is their definition. Conservatives literally want to conserve. They want to keep things the way they are (or if they're lucky bring them back to where they were). Traditional is praised. Change is pessimistically feared. Liberals literally want liberty. But by liberty they mean freedom to live the life one desires (freedom from harmful controlling forces). The future is praised. Change is optimistically pursued.

But this all gets confused when looked at within a nation (especially one as unique as the United States). Our Founding Fathers were a mix of Conservatives (like the architect of our central banking system Alexander Hamilton) and Liberals (like the ardent freedom fighter Thomas Jefferson). But even these men would not fit into our modern usages of the words. I doubt Alexander Hamilton would consistently support (or could even imagine) the amount of government regulation we have today. And I doubt Thomas Jefferson would consistently support (or could even imagine) the level of personal freedom we each have with the internet, automatic machine guns, and international connectivity. And if you look back in time and support either of these two, it is by its nature Conservative.

So how can we accurately measure relative terms that change based on time, geographies, and issue? I suggest looking to at how we order from menus. A Conservative, who by nature expects future uncertainty to be worse than past certainty, will order what they always order. In my case, bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries. A Liberal, who by nature expects future uncertainty to be an improvement on past certainty, will order something new. In my case, bacon cheeseburger with a side of seasoned fries. Well, I guess by my example you know where my heart is. I don't do well with change.

Major Problem with the Gold Standard

2012-01-10T22:31:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul is back and so are his calls for the gold standard. I've talked before that even though gold is the best element for exchange, it still can be gotten rid of, so has similar problems of a fiat standard. However, Tyler Cowen (the only person with his own label on my blog) thinks it has more foundational problems:

The most fundamental argument against a gold standard is that when the relative price of gold is go up, that creates deflationary pressures on the general price level, thereby harming output and employment. There is also the potential for radically high inflation through gold, though today that seems like less a problem than it was in the seventeenth century.?

Why put your economy at the mercy of these essentially random forces? I believe the 19th century was a relatively good time to have had a gold standard, but the last twenty years, with their rising commodity prices, would have been an especially bad time. When it comes to the next twenty years, who knows?

Whether or not there is “enough gold,” and there always will be at some price, the transition to a gold standard still involves the likelihood of major price level shocks, if only because the transition itself involves a repricing of gold. A gold standard, by the way, is still compatible with plenty of state intervention.

I Don't Want to Buy Anything

2012-01-09T23:53:00.003-05:00

Loyal reader Free Spirit recently asked how the transition has been to my new smart phone. I'd break my use down to 25% email reading, 25% blog reading, 25% gps, and 25% other (camera, games, social networking, calculator, flashlight etc). Mostly things I was already doing right when I got home, but now I can do them on the go, in the line, and on the toilet.

But the biggest change has been my purchasing satisfaction. In the last month I've bought the two things I've been researching and reading about for almost 4 years, a smart phone and a nice TV. And since I've bought both I literally haven't wanted much else. I recently realized that if my income went up $50,000 I'm not sure what more I would buy. Unless you can tell me some thing I'm missing...

Emptying the Bottle: Early January '12 Links

2012-01-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

Will our grandchildren be totally weirded out that shots used to hurt [audio]?
What Washington crossing the Delaware really looked like.
My career has a purpose! School raises IQ!
Do you park to get there or park yo leave?
The greatest creation of global capitalism or I, cheeseburger.
The human transformer [video].
How the weather affects us.
20GB in 30 years via Justin Scott.
Role of charisma in politics [video] via Justin Wehr.
There really are devices that can increase penis size.
Sad thought, cognitive decline starts at 45 (earlier).
Soap opera's freedom, gay candidate, justified Japanese internment and more!

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Why Losing Weight is So Hard

2012-01-08T23:52:00.002-05:00

Because your body fights it:

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

This is why it's important to be active and never gain the weight. But that's hard.